


Tanabata

by PunishedPyotr



Series: Only Ones and Zeros [1]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Angst, Artificial Intelligence, M/M, Post-mortem, Virtual Reality, cute ending though I swear, established relationship sort of?, reupload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 07:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13518999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunishedPyotr/pseuds/PunishedPyotr
Summary: There is a doctrine about the nature and place of the mind which is prevalent among theorists, to which most philosophers, psychologists and religious teachers subscribe with minor reservations. Although they admit certain theoretical difficulties in it, they tend to assume that these can be overcome without serious modifications being made to the architecture of the theory. ... [the doctrine states that] every human being has both a body and a mind. ... The body and the mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body the mind may continue to exist and function. Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as "the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine."Gilbert Ryle,The Concept of Mind(1949)





	Tanabata

**Author's Note:**

> ("hey pp what the fucke are you doing this is still alive on aireyv's account" wellllll a coupel fics in the series did need to be taken down which left really big holes, plot-wise, so i asked aireyv what to do about it and they said to just repost THE ENTIRE SERIES here, and they'd take down the fics on their account as they go up here. so no duplicates! just the whole series is getting imported. yippee! -pp)

He remembers closing his eyes for the last time, and then a lot of white light.

And he remembers Eli not being there.

Mantis stands looking down at his own body and it’s not lying on the floor of the commander’s room like it should be. He doesn’t know where he is, actually - he’s completely alone, no one around for miles, but somehow  _above_  him he can hear the very distant hum of thousands of minds just outside the extreme limit of his range and he wonders if he’s somehow miles below a city.

This certainly isn’t Shadow Moses anymore.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been  _since_  Shadow Moses. Looking at his body, there’s no indication. If his flesh has wasted away, after all, then it would be impossible to tell because he already looked like that in life. Besides, there’s frost edging the metal slab he’s lying on. Wherever he is, it’s cold enough to retard decomposition.

Not that Mantis can feel it anymore.

Looking at his body, he almost laughs because all he can think about is how he’d never quite understood why Eli had a tendency to nag him about eating. Seeing himself, in the flesh, not just reflected in a mirror or someone else’s mind, is a strange experience. He’s so  _thin_.

The next thing he knows his consciousness is trapped by nanomachines and he’s chained to a screaming child who is sort of psychic, sort of a fraud.

He tries to get out of it but he’s unsuccessful and as time passes he gradually gives up and cooperates with his captors. At least they had the decency to name the kid after him. Screaming Mantis. Nice girl. Cannibal.

They keep her drugged and usually when she says something it’s just Mantis himself speaking through her mouth. But he doesn’t talk much either. His first demand -  _What happened to Liquid Snake?_  - goes unanswered. Can’t dig the answers out of anyone’s minds, either. He’s not alone like he first thought; everyone here has those damned cybernetic implants that he’s always hated.

Most days he’s not needed and he’s not bothered. The upside to Mantis’ entire self being reduced to a bunch of microscopic robots is that he can easily access the network they’re attached to, once he figures that out. He finds out what’s going on with the world that way - and how long it’s been since he died - and that Eli is dead, too.

He’s not surprised.

Upset, but not surprised.

He only wishes he could see him again.

One day he stumbles upon a VR program in New York that’s very heavily tied into the Patriot network he’s drifting aimlessly through. If he still had breath, it would have caught in his throat when he saw it.

Shadow Moses. It’s Shadow Moses.

A perfect recreation, in terms of the environment. Every last detail is just how he remembers it, just how he lived it. It’s even populated with a simulated Genome Army, and the ArmsTech president and that engineer who was in love with Wolf, and Campbell’s niece and that idiot who transferred in with her, and that insane so-called ninja, and…

And FOXHOUND, too, they’re there. Most of them, anyway. Ocelot isn’t. The DARPA chief is, although at the point the VR covers he’d already been dead for days.

Mantis just observes at first.

The man going through the VR, over and over, is called Snake but his name is Jack, although it isn’t his given name, just the only one he knows. Jack sort of reminds Mantis of Eli - at first it’s just the long blond hair and the way he whines, but there’s nothing stopping Mantis from rifling through his memories, and as he does he finds that Jack was a child soldier in an African civil war, same as Eli.

Different conflict, of course. A later one. And he never made anything of himself the way young Eli did — Jack’s not a leader, he’s a follower. He doesn’t have that  _hunger_  Eli had.

Watching Jack fight the computer simulation of Eli and defeat him, over and over, feels wrong.

But of course, watching Jack, a lot of Mantis’ idle questions are answered. Although Jack is under the impression that this is exactly how Solid Snake’s mission on Shadow Moses went down, it’s a bastardized version of events, heavily edited and censored by the Patriots. It isn’t hard to figure out why Ocelot isn’t there. He’s replaced by Octopus, for the part where Snake rescues the ArmsTech president. And the part where Snake meets the DARPA chief, that’s supposed to be the real one. There’s no FOXDIE here. Baker and Anderson both succumb to injuries. So does Eli.

There’s also a lot less talking.

Still, though, apart from the simple-minded Genome soldiers, everyone’s got rather complex programming. They’re not just following a script any more than Jack is - they’re all programmed to have in-character responses to whatever Jack may try to do to go off the rails, although, granted, their primary directive in those situations is to force Jack back to how it’s “supposed to go.” It’s never difficult, either, since Jack doesn’t mind playing out Snake’s manipulation over and over — he’s more focused on completing the exercise as efficiently as possible.

But the AIs can learn. That’s the important thing.

Very early one morning, when no one’s really awake to question why a VR simulation is running with no one in it, Mantis decides to do more than just observe.

It feels realer to him than it does for Jack. After all, he’s in the computer itself. It feels realer, too, than the girl’s body. Rawer.

It almost hurts. Mantis has forgotten what pain is like.

Shadow Moses is empty tonight, all subprograms except for the Liquid Snake AI temporarily disabled. Mantis knows he’ll find him in the control room overlooking REX’s hangar, but he hesitates. It’s not Eli, of course, he knows that. It’s just a shallow facsimile, not even an echo of who he was. Every detail of his personnel file might be loaded into his subroutines, but that’s still missing easily half his life, half his personality, half of what made him  _him_.

Mantis knows this but he misses him too much to do anything besides walk across the simulated snow towards the maintenance base.

He has to admit, it’s a good recreation.

Eli greets him the same way he always did, or rather the same way he always did when they were around others, which is close enough considering Mantis obviously hasn’t seen him since he died. His voice is perfect, and so are his movements, not only realistic and smooth enough to never dip into the uncanny valley, but also  _exactly_  like the real Eli’s. Every detail of his appearance is accurate down to the pore. Jack’s VR regimen is immersive alright.

The only thing it can’t recreate is the wildness in Eli’s eyes. It’s just not there. The flat expression in his eyes, no matter what the rest of his face is doing, betrays him as unfeeling, unliving circuitry and code.

Mantis looks away.

Not being able to read his mind - since there is none to read - is bad enough.

“Mantis?” the fake Eli says, “is something the matter?”

“It… is nothing, boss,” Mantis says, and even though right now his only senses are supposed to be those provided by the VR, he still feels a lump in his throat.

He doesn’t know why he comes back the next night.

_Eli_ , he calls him without intending to, and is met with a confused look.

“Eli? Who are you talking about?” he says. “There’s no one on this base named Eli.”

Mantis is silent for a moment. Of course. He should have expected that - the name doesn’t appear anywhere in any of Eli’s files. Mantis was the only one who called him that in adulthood, and even then only in their more intimate moments. The name might as well not exist.

Of course the AI wouldn’t know it.

But the AI can learn. So Mantis decides to teach it- teach  _him_ \- about himself. It wouldn’t exactly be bringing his Eli back - that was impossible - but perhaps a replacement Eli who actually acted like the  _whole_  of the real Eli, not just what Snake saw of him on Shadow Moses, would help Mantis feel a little less… depressed.

“That is  _your_  name,” Mantis says, and Eli blinks.

It’s kind of funny.

Mantis repeatedly pushes Eli to the edge of his logical parameters as he slowly builds him up to what he was supposed to be anyway. Turns out he has a default response to information he has trouble parsing, an emotionless “I don’t understand” or “I don’t know,” depending on if Mantis is explaining things to him or asking questions. He even has a gesture to go with it — the exact same gesture each time, huffily crossing his arms, a stock animation expressing annoyance and frustration.

Mantis asks a lot of questions so that Eli can properly map out events and details in his allotted corner of system memory. He keeps finding himself asking him if he  _remembers_ , like this is the real Eli and he’s just forgotten half of everything.

“Did that really happen?”

“Of course it did. I was there.”

“I don’t have any records of such an event…”

Mantis can’t get away with it forever.

It happens suddenly. Jack is going through the program again, and he’s reached the part where he and Eli are about to fistfight on top of the destroyed REX, and Eli goes off-script.

The whole simulation is pulled offline the second the words ‘Les Enfants Terribles’ come out of Eli’s mouth. Jack is sent home for the day. He’s a little confused, but shrugs and moves on.

_How did the Liquid Snake AI know about that?_  someone asks,  _there was nothing about Les Enfants Terribles anywhere in its initial memory. Where did it pick that up from?_

_It must be pulling data from the network_ , someone answers,  _double-check its access authorization. Make sure it can only cross-reference the files we loaded onto it, not anything else that mentions Liquid Snake._

Eli is reset.

Mantis quietly makes a backup of the environmental data and Eli’s AI, and hides the programs away in another part of the network. It’s just another thing running in the background, spread across several computers, with no user interface whatsoever.

Mantis doesn’t need one, after all.

“Your name is Eli,” he says, patiently starting from scratch with the backup Eli no one but him can touch, “but when I first met you you still thought of yourself as Nyoka ya Mpembe, the White Mamba.”

“White Mamba…” Eli echoes, and it’s not in a tone that implies familiarity, but at the same time he’s never once rejected any scrap of information Mantis has given him. Mantis likes to think Eli’s unquestioning trust in him was such an immutable trait that the Patriots had no choice but to program it into his digital counterpart.

But really, he’s just a computer program. Those things aren’t designed to question.

Eli has a hard time coming around to the idea that the events of Shadow Moses didn’t happen the way the simulation proceeds.

“I don’t understand,” he says.

“You are being lied to. They tampered with your memories.”

Eli still has his arms crossed. His expression is blank. He’s processing things. “Ocelot isn’t even here.”

“He  _was_. He betrayed you.”

“He wouldn’t. He’s not here.”

“The Patriots couldn’t risk his identity getting out like this. They’re keeping ‘Snake’ in the dark.”

Another pause. “I don’t understand.”

Someone’s bothering the kid. Mantis has to go. Eli doesn’t know how to say goodbye; it’s not in his coding.

“I will be back tomorrow,” Mantis says.

“It’s always the same night here,” Eli replies.

Mantis is back tomorrow and he’s slouched lazily in his chair with Eli sitting on his desk, his ankle resting on his knee. Eli has a curious expression on his face - he’s quickly come to associate Mantis running the VR program with data input and he seems very thirsty for new information… like any given learning AI, Mantis supposes, but the real Eli had indeed been the nosy type so Mantis can’t complain.

“Who am I?” says Mantis.

“What do you mean, who are you?” Eli scoffs. “What kind of question is that?”

“You… are supposed to see anyone who is undergoing this simulation as Solid Snake, are you not?”

“I do, yes,” Eli says, cocking his head slightly, “but you’re not someone undergoing the simulation. You’re…” he trails off, and his expression briefly fades to neutrality before suddenly returning to emotion. “You’re from within the Patriots’ network. You’re another program, yes? I know you’re not the Mantis coded specifically for this simulation, of course.”

Mantis shakes his head. “I am not an AI. I am- I  _was_  a real person, the real Psycho Mantis.”

“I see,” Eli says. He pauses. “But then, that means you’re dead. Mantis dies at Shadow Moses, it happens every time.”

“Yes. I’m dead. As are you.”

“I know. I die at the end of the simulation. Snake defeats me.” He blinks. “But it’s different for you, then, isn’t it? Every time I die, all it means is that I am no longer an active participant in the simulation until the next time it’s being run again. I still run passively in the background. The only interruptions in my input stream are when the VR shuts down. I suppose that’s more like sleep, no?”

Mantis winces behind his mask. He doesn’t like it when Eli speaks so frankly about the fact that he is, in fact, only an AI, and aware of it, too.

“So you want me to tell you who you are,” Eli says, abruptly returning to Mantis’ original question when Mantis doesn’t reply.

“I want to know what you think of me. Yes.”

Eli tells Mantis who he is. It’s a recitation of the same information that went into coding Mantis’ AI counterpart, and nothing more.

Mantis is missing even more of his life than Eli is.

“Do you have any idea of what I am doing  _before_  I joined the KGB?” Mantis asks.

“You… were with me,” Eli says, “since I was twelve. We assumed that you were ten at the time.” He frowns. “I don’t have any records of what happened between when you removed the vocal cord parasite from my throat, and when you left to join the KGB. Did that happen at the same time I joined the SAS?”

“Yes,” Mantis says.

“So that’s still a blank spot of six years.”

“It would be difficult to fill you in all at once…”

“Oh, right. Hm. Then, why ask me what happened?”

Mantis looks away from him deliberately. “Just… wondering how much you already knew. I suppose I am not surprised that your only information about our past together comes from what I have told you so far.”

“Well, it isn’t relevant to the revolution, is it?”

“It is  _very_  relevant, Eli.”

Eli watches him, awaiting input.

Mantis sighs. “Tell me, Eli, what do you think of me?”

“I already told you. You’re-“

“No, not who I am. What you think of me.”

“I don’t understand,” he says, crossing his arms.

_What you think of me_  must be defined as the same thing as  _What you know about me_  in Eli’s code. “What is my relationship to you, as you understand it?” Mantis tries.

“You’re my subordinate,” Eli answers, “but since you’re such an excellent strategist, I consult you on most key decisions.”

“And that’s all?”

“…what else is there?”

Mantis leans forward and takes Eli’s face in his hands. Eli doesn’t seem surprised by the move, but it’s plain even from his expression that it’s unexpected and, as far as he’s concerned, inexplicable.

“I’m your best friend,” Mantis says softly, “your partner, and your other half. Your  _soulmate_ , you once thought of me.”

“Soulmate?”

“You were… in love with me, Eli.”

Eli makes a face. “I was? I mean- I am?”

“Yes. You developed a silly infatuation with me when you were twelve, and it just… never went away, no matter how much time or distance there was between us.”

“I see,” Eli says plainly, and Mantis frowns. He’s just filing more information about himself away. As it stands, all that’s changed here is that there’s a little variable in Eli’s data files that now says ‘in love with Psycho Mantis.’ The AI has no context for how the real Eli  _acted_  with those feelings of his.

“You would show me your softer side,” Mantis says, speaking as if he’s answering a question even though Eli hasn’t asked, “your vulnerable side. Only I was allowed to see it.”

“My… vulnerable side?” Liquid says.

“Yes. You liked to cuddle…”

“This doesn’t seem consistent. My ‘likes’ don’t include cuddling anywhere in them.”

“Every other member of FOXHOUND had walked in on us at  _least_ once,” Mantis says, rubbing a thumb over Eli’s cheekbone - he still marvels at how real it feels — “the sort of relationship we had was well-known, but not openly discussed. No one would have put it on paper.”

“Were you in love with me?” Eli asks. He only sounds curious.

Mantis doesn’t know how to answer.

Eli rephrases the question, very frankly. “Why do you keep coming back to this simulation, just to talk to me and tell me about the parts of me the Patriots didn’t program in?”

That’s easier. “I need you,” Mantis says. “I cannot  _exist_  without you.”

“I don’t understand.”

The next time Mantis runs the VR program they lie together on the roof of one of the communications towers, looking up at the simulated stars. Mantis is impressed that they were included in the programming anywhere, considering a blizzard raged almost through the entire incident - but then, as he’s observed while watching Jack, it had died down before morning, so it isn’t too surprising that blizzard-less conditions were created just in case.

It’s cold, but neither Mantis nor Eli care very much.

“I’ve a bit of a problem now, Mantis,” Eli says.

“Mm?”

“There are still contradictory conditions. If I’m in love with you, that doesn’t explain my reaction to your death.”

Mantis sits up. It hadn’t even occured to him that this Eli would know how the real Eli reacted when he died.

He’s afraid to ask.

He does anyway.

“Psycho Mantis…” Eli says, and he’s speaking in that horrible fake American accent he used to imitate Kazuhira Miller, and Mantis would like to think that it’s just a bug but  _knows_  that he’s listening to what the real Eli said to Snake over Codec, “what a pathetic man. He was born with all the right tools, but he never knew how to use them…”

“Why… why would you say that,” Mantis says hoarsely.

Eli glances at him, one eyebrow raised. “I don’t have any records of what emotions I was feeling during the real Shadow Moses incident, since none exist, and there’s nothing in my emotion simulation programming that makes any guesses at it.”

“…perhaps… perhaps it was only meant to be an in-character comment,” Mantis says, largely to himself, “with no indication of your real feelings.”

But he remembers how upset Eli sounded, even while trying to pretend to be Miller, when he had to take Snake’s call about Octopus dying. He didn’t hear that kind of barely-restrained emotion in this snippet of conversation. If anything, he heard contempt and disappointment.

He stares at his lap instead of looking at Eli.

“Why would I say such a cold thing about you?” Eli says, almost hesitantly, “can you explain it, Mantis?”

“…no. No, I can’t.”

There’s a long, pregnant pause.

“I think…” Eli says eventually, fixing his gaze on the stars, “that I had to bury my grief over your death immediately. I think I wouldn’t have been able to continue carrying out the revolution if I didn’t do that. I would have just torn myself apart.”

Mantis glances at him, surprised. It’s the first time he’s heard such insight from the AI Eli.

“But then again,” Eli says, “I can’t say for sure. You die every time someone runs through the exercise, and I never feel a thing. I don’t know if it’s because I know your program is still perfectly intact and in fact still running, just not actively, or if it’s because my emotional simulation programming is extremely limited and I’m not coded to feel grief… or love.” He pauses. “I’m not the real Liquid, Mantis, no matter how much you want me to be. I’m only ones and zeros.”

“I know,” Mantis says quietly.

Neither of them say anything for a while. Then Mantis feels a hand brush against his.

It’s the first time he's initiated any physical contact in the virtual world.

“Mantis, when you come to see me — are you happy?”

“…what?”

“My purpose, ancillary to acting as Liquid Snake, is to analyze Liquid’s personality. Based on the information you’ve given me, I would say - he would want you to be happy, even if it meant leaving him behind. Or a version of him, anyway. So, are you happy with me?”

Mantis has no idea how to answer. He draws his knees up to his chest and hides his head between them, one hand on the back of his neck, the other still in Eli’s.

He hasn’t been paying attention to how long, precisely, it’s  _been_  since Shadow Moses, but it still feels like a fresh wound, raw and agonizing, slowly killing him although he’s already dead.

Eli’s hand gently squeezes his.

“Sorry. Shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Another upside to Mantis’ entire self being reduced to a bunch of microscopic robots is that when he cries, the only one who has to know about it is a computer program who looks and acts exactly like Liquid Snake, down the way he pulls Mantis towards him and wraps his arms around his shoulders, murmuring apologies.

Before Mantis knows it, it’s been four years.

Specifically, it’s been four years, two months, and three days since Solid Snake shot him to death and went on to infect Eli with FOXDIE. Mantis never cared to find out what happened with Jack after backing up the Shadow Moses VR, and as for the girl - well, she’s still screaming, but she’s in her teens now, and the body of a teenage girl is even  _less_  pleasant to inhabit than the body of a child.

Mantis spends a lot of time in the network. It’s been expanding, he notes.

He spends today in the virtual Shadow Moses, with Eli. He’s almost perfect after all this time. Almost  _Eli_. Mantis can almost convince himself that they’re both still alive, and happy together.

It’s more convincing when Mantis doesn’t look him in the eyes.

So instead he stares out across the glaciers, at the rising sun. Eli’s sitting next to him, settled comfortably against his shoulder. It’s… nice.

And something changes.

Mantis knows what it is almost before he consciously realizes it. There’s a  _mind_  here all of a sudden, an unguarded one, and it’s very close by and Mantis chokes on nothing when he realizes it’s  _Eli’s_.

“You really missed me this much?” Eli murmurs next to his ear, a bit of bashful amusement in his voice.

Mantis whips his head around so fast that he very nearly smacks Eli in the face with the filter of his gas mask. Eli ducks out of the way just in time, grinning.

There’s a light in his eyes.

He looks  _alive_.

“Kept you waiting, eh, Mantis?” he says, his smile widening. “Sorry about that. I didn’t realize you stuck around as a ghost - I must admit I’m unclear on this whole situation anyway as it is, but, regardless — Ocelot’s managed to lose my arm, so as a result he’s sort of ousted me from his head, and—-“

Even in a digital reality, Mantis is still far too light to bowl Eli over, but nonetheless he throws himself against him, wrapping his arms around him and burying his head in his shoulder.

_I thought I was never going to see you again_ , he thinks.

“I thought the same thing,” Eli says, rubbing his back. “Come now, Mantis, it’s not like you to be this overemotional. That’s  _my_  job.”

_It just wasn’t the same with an AI. I need_ you _, Eli._

“I know, I know. I’m very sorry.” He flops on his back, catching Mantis by the upper arms so that Mantis is looking him down in the face. “I still love you, you know.”

“I know,” Mantis says. And he does. He can feel it. It seems like a long time since he’s really felt anything, let alone something as incredible and  _intense_  as this.

“Is it alright to take your mask off here? We do seem to be the only ones around, but then, this  _is_  just VR…”

Mantis nods, and Liquid, smiling and biting his lip, hurriedly unclasps his mask and gives him a quick kiss on the mouth.

“ _God_  I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“You are more than welcome to it, Eli.”

“Really?” He kisses him again, longer this time, pulling him closer with a hand on the back of his neck. “I’m sure you’ll get tired of me eventually.”

“I spent the last four years talking to an AI of you.”

“Beats only having Ocelot to talk to. We have a lot to catch up on, don’t we?”

“You do,” Mantis says, settling down on Eli’s chest, tucking his head under his chin. “I already read everything in your mind.”

“Ha. Cheater. Alright, what’s the first thing you remember after dying? Has to be better than suddenly realizing all you can feel is your  _arm_.”

“Hmmm. Well, they had my body in cold storage in a facility somewhere in California…”

**Author's Note:**

> (any and all comments will be forewarded to aireyv! i will either copy/paste their reply to me or they will reply on their own account! have a nice day!!! if you have any questions, just ask!!!!)


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